Chen Lizra

Lewis Howes:              This is episode number 628 with Chen Lizra.

Welcome to The School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin.

Albert Camus said that, “Charm is a way of getting the answer, ‘yes,’ without ever having asked a clear question.”

Today we’ve got a powerful guest on, her name is Chen Lizra, and she’s a TED speaker, award winning social entrepreneur, somatic intelligence life coach, and bestselling author and professional dancer. She spent over a decade investigating Cubans’ emotional intelligence secrets through their body language. A culture that, due to it’s unique circumstances, did not lose the body-mind connection lost in the western world, resulting in her unique somatic method.

This experience has inspired her TED talk, which has gained to date, over 8 million views worldwide. And some of the things we cover today, are the difference between how seduction is viewed in different cultures. Also, why it’s so important to believe we can have anything we want in this world. Also, how we hold trauma in our minds and in our bodies.

The five elements of somatic intelligence, our true nature, how to know if a ‘no’ is a ‘no’, or if a ‘no’ is a ‘maybe’, and how to cultivate charm. This is all about the culture of influence, seduction and mastering your body. I’m super pumped for this one and I hope you enjoy it.

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Alright guys, this is all about influence, seduction, sensuality, mastering your somatic intelligence, with the one, the only, Chen Lizra.

Welcome back, everyone, to The School of Greatness Podcast, we have the lovely Chen Lizra in the house. Thank you so much for being here, it’s great, I’m excited!

Chen Lizra:                   Thank you for having me.

Lewis Howes:               You got introduced to me our mutual friend Esther Perel who is incredible, who’s been on the show a couple of times. She’s doing incredible work and she doesn’t e-mail me introductions, ever, but she said I’ve got to have you on the podcast.

So I said, “Let me research more, I’ve never heard of her,” but the more I started digging in, I really liked what you were talking about. And you had a TED Talk come out about seduction, sexual seduction, and really just how to seduce people in general and how important it is to be seductive in our lives, work, on the streets, in relationships, all these different areas of life.

And how, in Cuba, when you visited Cuba, you’d see kids being celebrated for being playful and seductive in their own childlike way. And how, in America, it’s kind of a lost art. We’ve been told to close off and not be as flirtatious or seductive in that manner. Am I right there?

Chen Lizra:                   I will correct you on some things, that what the main theme of the TED was about how seduction is viewed in a whole other way, in another culture, in this case, Cuba, that builds confidence for them. That’s what it is. So, while we see seduction in, let’s say, North America, or Europe, as something that you’re taking something away, you’re robbing something away from somebody, you’re using your power to manipulate. And these are the words, right? Like, robbing and manipulation and using and all these things. They see it as a positive life skill.

So, inside of seduction, they have something like the elegance of the possession of yourself. And inside of that there’s pride, and in pride you feel good about yourself, about what you’ve achieved, what you’ve done, and that’s what attracts to you. So it’s about self-worth, really.

So the way they approach it is very different than the Western world, and it’s a positive thing, and I want it to flip the view of people to a new way of seeing the world, about seduction, that would say, “This is not necessarily a negative thing. It’s a power.” And like any power it can be used for good, or it can be used for bad. I give you money, you can do wonderful philanthropic things with it, or you can go and you can become a drug dealer with it. What you choose to do with that power has ethics or it doesn’t. It’s the same as the power of seduction.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah, and I think, in America, when someone says, “Seduction,” they think of it as more manipulative if someone is seducing someone. But really, anyone who achieves their dreams is a seducer. In my mind.

If you want to build a big business and you need to seduce people and enrol people in your vision and in your dream. If you want to have a partner, a romantic partner, you need to seduce them in why you are a good match, right? You need to give them something that they don’t have, or call something out of them, like I think you talked about in your TED Talk. It’s like finding the gap within someone’s heart and filling that gap. Showing them what’s possible. And I think you mentioned showing up with possibilities, right?

Chen Lizra:                   Part of the problem is that people, when they think, “seduction”, they think sexuality. So they think if it’s seductive, then it’s about sex and sleeping with people. But seductive is also a trailer for a movie. Because it gives you just enough, not revealing, but enticing you enough that you want to see more.

Lewis Howes:               “I want it! I got to watch this movie!”

Chen Lizra:                   Right. That’s seduction. There are many forms of seduction that we use daily, all the time, if we just understand the energy and we can take out the sexuality of it and it’s just a process of enticing.

Lewis Howes:               In business, as well, they call that a “take-away close”. They say, “Well, I have this thing, but it may be not the right thing for you. You’re probably not ready for it. You may not qualify, so it’s probably not a good fit for you.” And then someone wants it even more. The thing they can’t have. Right? So in business you can do that, with a trailer, whatever it may be, right?

Chen Lizra:                   That’s very seductive, actually! Yeah! It makes you feel like, especially for people who are high achievers, they’re like, “What do you mean?”

Lewis Howes:               “I want that! That’s mine!”

Chen Lizra:                   “I deserve this! Not just want this!”

Lewis Howes:               Exactly! We have a high level group called the Mastermind Program. And I really qualify people, it’s not a sales tactic, but I’m like, “I need the right people in this, so tell me why you should fit in here, why you shold be part of this group. Because it’s probably not a good fit.”

It’s not like an intentional sales tactic, but it’s like, “This is the truth, tell me why?” And people are like, “Well, I really want to be in now,” so it’s easier, almost when you just say, “Tell me why you want this?”

Okay, but you’re also not in this space of seduction and we’ll talk about somatic intelligence in a second, you were not in this space for a career. You were in a career for, I think, a decade. Was it videogames or online gaming or graphics or something.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, I was a computer animator, so I was doing character animation. That was my speciality. And I started with…

Lewis Howes:               That’s crazy!

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, it was really fun! It was really fun, living in a world, in a kid’s world, was super exciting. I mean, you’re doing animations, I started with a TV show and then I did one videogame that was Jackie Chan Stuntmaster, and then I continued with more TV shows and started with being an animator, and then I led a whole animation team.

Lewis Howes:               Where was this? What city, or what country?

Chen Lizra:                   I was in Vancouver, in Canada, then I was in Montreal, then I was in Toronto. I was chasing the projects, really. And it was a good life, it was a good life for a while. But I honestly wasn’t happy. I was working fourteen hour days, seven days a week, and at one point I got tired of being a slave.

Like, there was one aspect of the work which I loved, and the other aspect which I felt like, just didn’t align with the way I wanted to live my life, and what really, really stood out all the time, was that I wanted to make a difference. And I felt like giving people a break from life, to entertain them for a little, wasn’t the kind of a difference that I wanted. And I wanted to work with people. Not in front of a computer, through a character.

Lewis Howes:               Got it. And so you decided what? After this awakening, this awareness?

Chen Lizra:                   Well, here’s a real interesting part of this. So before that, I lived in Japan in an old traditional dojo and studied Zen Buddhism.

Lewis Howes:               Meditation, right?For how long?

Chen Lizra:                   For about a month. Really intense.

Lewis Howes:               Before your career started?

Chen Lizra:                   Yes. And from there I went to animation school, and there couldn’t be a bigger flip, from total balance, to fourteen hour days, seven days a week. It was crazy. And I tried different aspects of the industry to find a way to balance it, and at one point I realised there was no way for me to balance it. That was the industry. You saw people that had broken families, you know, and it just kept on.

Lewis Howes:               Divorces and stress and overweight and whatever.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah. It wasn’t working.

Lewis Howes:               How long were you working?

Chen Lizra:                   It was almost a decade of doing this, maybe about seven years or eight years in total. And I was really burned out, like, the passion died. And I operate from passion, when I have a goal, when I have this dream or something, I explode on it. So I decided to take a year off and to search for what I wanted to do.

I was looking for a simple job, just to pay the bills, and I created a binder, I still have it at home. And it’s called, Getting The Life You Want. And for a year I created categories and things that I thought would interest me, no limits. No limits. Anything was game, to figure it out. And it included informational interviews and trying to really understand it, and it’s really interesting, we’ll come back to that later, because half of this happened!

And it’s real interesting to see what I wrote, because I wanted to be a bestselling author and I wanted to do workshops that would change the world and would bring transformation between body and mind, and I wanted to be a public speaker and motivate people and then I think it was the TV show, which didn’t happen, and there were different things, right? Photojournalist in war zones. There were different things that inspired me.

Anyway, after a year, I still couldn’t find what I wanted to do. I had a wonderful binder. I knew myself really well. I wrote everything that mattered to me. Who I was. What I liked doing. If somebody opened this, they would understand who I am. Still couldn’t figure it out. So I sat down with my friend, Rob, that I told you about before, and he was a wildlife photographer at the time, and right before he became a really famous director, because his vision was to save the sharks of the world. And he was living a dream life.

And I said to him, “Rob. It’s been a year, and I can’t find what I want.” And he looked at me and he said one sentence that changed my life forever. He said, “Of course you can’t find what you want. Because, like most people, you don’t believe that you can have what you want.” And I went, “Yeah!” Went home. Didn’t get it. Didn’t get it!

So I sat at home and I opened that binder and I flipped through the pages, and anything that I saw, I scratched off, not possible, not possible. I didn’t have this degree, I didn’t have that experience, I didn’t… And one by one I killed them all. And then I thought about him and the fact that he was living his dream. And I was thinking about me, him, me, him, me, and what he said, and I was like, “Well, what’s the difference between us?”

And then it was like bricks fell on me. It was like, “Wow! The only difference is that he believes that he can have what he wants, and I don’t.” And in that moment something shifted, because that was, like, “Then I’m getting what I want.” It was just a decision. I was like, “I don’t know what I want, but I’m getting it.” It was like that knowing that I could have it. So I was like, “Okay, dream job is the goal. I’m getting it. It’s obvious.”

Lewis Howes:               Even though you weren’t sure what it was yet. You’re making an effort. Once you figure it out, you’ll get it.

Chen Lizra:                   Doesn’t matter. I know I’m getting it! To figure out the what is the easy part, now that I know that I can have it, right? So I was like, “I’m getting the life I want.” And then I was like, “Okay, so what’s the next step to figuring it out?”

So I went into another Tibetan retreat to meditate, because one thing I had learned in Japan, doing this, was that there’s so much noise that society makes for us, with fears that enter. So, you sit there and you think about what you want, and people are afraid for you that you’ll get hurt, that you’ll make mistakes, the you’ll fall on your face. So they start to put that fear into you. And then that paralyses a lot of people, because it meets their own fear.

And if you don’t have the fear, it’s fine, but if you have the fear and it meets whatever everybody else tells you, you want support and you don’t get, then you get paralysed and you back out. So, in Japan, I learned that if I meditate and I centre myself and I distance myself from society, I can hear my own voice and I don’t need to ask, I just need to see inside what the answer was. So I went, because there was so much fear inside me, I didn’t ask society, I went to meditate.

And in my meditation, this is really funny, I sat there in my meditation and I’m saying this to myself, “Whatever the answer will be, I will accept it. I will accept it. I will accept the answer because it’s my answer, I will accept it.” And I can’t remember how many days, like a week of silence or something like that, and I get this feeling, like, “It’s got to be business school,” and then the next reaction is like, “Oh no!! What are you mean business school?! I’m an artist! I can’t do business school, it’s like… No! No!”

And then the next thing is I start breathing and I’m like, “You said that if it will be your answer you will accept it.” So I surrendered, I said, “Okay, business school, that’s the next step.” So I got myself into business school and got myself into a university where the people that were teaching were ones that were doing real business.

Like the one who taught me advertising, had Todd Newfield. Incredible guy! He was my mentor for a while. He had an ad agency in Japan who worked with Coca-Cola, Loreal, Disney. He sold it for 51 million and went to teach. Those are the kind of people you want to learn from. They know what they’re doing.

So I came to them and I made a deal with them and I said, “Look, I’m coming,” I was in another university, that was really famous and they were just professors. They didn’t know how to do business. I said, “I’m moving to your university which is unknown, but under one condition,” and they said, “Well, what’s the condition?” I said, “I’m working on my business.” They said, “Well, what’s your business?” I said, “I don’t know yet, but I’ll have one by then.” And they went, “Okay, shake on it.”

And we shook on it, and that’s what I did. So I basically started working on my business in school, and every class that I had, I tried it on the business, which is amazing, because it’s not any more a theory thing. They would teach me.

Lewis Howes:               You implemented it right away, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, exactly. So they would teach me marketing and then I would try it and I would come to school and be like, “It didn’t work.” And they’d go, “Well, what did you do?” So I said, “Well, you said this and this and so I tried that and that,” and they’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, you know what? Sometimes in the market there is a force that comes in and this affects this,” and I’m like, “Hold right there.” Run, try it, go, “It worked.”

So it became a very practical thing. And the business concept, Rob said to me, another brilliant thing, and he said, “You should have your job as what you would do even if you didn’t get paid, because you love it so much that you’d have to do it. That should be your business.”

And then he looked at me and he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be with dance.” I’m like, “Why do you say that?” You know, when it’s right there and you can’t see it?  So the first business was a dance academy, Cuban dance academy, and that’s what led me to Cuba, because I started travelling to Cuba to train and dance professionally.

Lewis Howes:               Wow! Okay. And then is that when you started learning about seduction and getting to know your body and understanding about your body?

Chen Lizra:                   Okay, let’s start with the fact that I’ve always worked with my body because I was doing sports and competing in athletics and I did ten years of gymnastics and that was my thing.

Lewis Howes:               In Israel?

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, it was four hours a day, five times a week, gymnastics and, I mean, you’re an athlete, you know what it’s like, when you’ve got that self discipline, you’re so connected to your body, you live through your body. So the connection was always there, but dancing was something that just lived in me. It wasn’t a profession, it was just, it came natural for me to control the body.

I would just look at a video clip and start imitating it and go, “Oh, yeah!” End up at a party and there’s a whole circle going, “Hey! There’s a show here!” You know? So getting to Cuba was never about the seduction to begin with, meaning I didn’t come to Cuba and say, “I want to learn about seduction. I’m going to go to Cuba.” I came to learn about dance.

And what I didn’t realise at the time, you know how we understand things in hindsight, was that, when I got to Cuba, my body still held a somatic trauma, the trauma in my body. Cognitively I was ten years working on the trauma that came from the fact that my mom got mentally sick. And I was broken to pieces, and it took, for example, six years just to build healthy boundaries.

Healthy boundaries are given to us, to most people, because it’s just common. You learn it from your mom and dad by living and it’s healthy and that’s it. Well, my mom got sick, she was an incredible woman, but she got sick with, you know, she was manic depressive and growing up around a person that was manic depressive and didn’t have healthy boundaries, broke me.

Because she would do things and they would hurt me and I was a child and I didn’t know how to put the boundaries in the right place and then it was expected of me to do certain things because it’s my mom, and it wasn’t healthy for me. So just building boundaries took five, six years. When I hit rock bottom and I started working on myself, I really hit rock bottom.

There was a moment in my life, at the age of twenty, when it was live or die. That was what was left. It was so bad, it was years of spinning down, down, down, down, and then I was sitting one day, on the street, under the sun, and it was like, “Live or die. What do you want? Because you can’t go on like this.” And I asked myself, I said, “What do you want? To live or to die?”

And then I just sat there and waited, for an hour, and then this amazing energy came. “But I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, all these things that I still haven’t done. And it was like, “I guess I’m not done yet.” But I promised myself that day something, and anybody who knows me, if I put my word to something, get out of the way.

Lewis Howes:               You’re doing it, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   Get out of the way. So I promised myself that it doesn’t matter how many years it’s going to take, I’m going to find the way out of this, and I’m going to fight till I do it. And it was really tough, because for ten years I tried to put it together and I was taking courses and trying therapists. You know when you have to resolve it? It took ten years to put it together and it kept falling apart, and you don’t know when it’s going to end.

But those ten years taught me crazy perseverance. Insane perseverance. If I’m now set to something, my gosh, most likely you’ll break first. Keeping a vision for ten years, in harsh conditions, in that sense, where you don’t feel good, bit it’s like you keep going and you keep going and you’re like, “I’m not giving up until I get there,” when it came together it was one of the happiest moments of my life. And one of the moments I’m the most proud of.

Lewis Howes:               That’s great! And when did it come together?

Chen Lizra:                   About fifteen years ago, or something like that, approximately. And when I got to Cuba, I was cognitively fine. That was after that click, but the body still held the trauma. We can hold it cognitively, but we can also hold it somatically in the body, which means that I’m still feeling that something’s not okay with me, something’s hurt, something’s damaged, and I got to find a way to heal the body.

Looking back, it wasn’t really the seduction. I thought it was the seduction. It was what Cubans have in their culture, that caused my body, over time, to heal from the trauma. I’m pretty sure I’m down to about 2%, the very elusive 2%, but I cleaned my body from the trauma.

Lewis Howes:               What did they have in the culture that allowed you to free yourself?

Chen Lizra:                   One of the them is the sabrosura. Sabrosura is the sensuality, that’s inside each and every one of us, that sits on physical self love. So, think about it as a society that doesn’t have material things for that many years. Like you’re talking about a country that got locked, because of communism, and socialism, where there’s no advertising on the streets or anywhere. Not on TV and not on the radio, no advertising. You’re in a sterile place. And then you don’t have internet on your phone and you don’t have the crazy technology that we have and everybody’s still on the streets connecting, like in the fifties and the sixties. Old school.

Lewis Howes:               Just talking to each other, in person.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah. Knock on the door when you need somebody, rather than texting or WhatsApping, and they didn’t have material things, but everybody didn’t have material things together. So there was a solidarity. And then, what happens when we don’t have material things? Where do we put that energy? To become happy? Where do you think?

Lewis Howes:               With each other? With ourselves and with each other.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah. Right! In human connections, exactly the point, right? If you can’t be out there, then you go in. So, they found ways that create a natural high through body movement. So it released dopamine and endorphins.

Lewis Howes:               And it’s constant, right? It’s all the time. Just like it’s all the time for us on our phones, it’s all the time, but it’s real in real life.

Chen Lizra:                   Yes. So this is one of the things. And, on top of that, when they’re moving with the sabrosura, and they have sabrosura for women and sabrosura for men, it actually sits in physical self-love that gets released in the body and you feel that warmth and you feel good, suddenly, about yourself.

Lewis Howes:               And you feel confident.

Chen Lizra:                   Also confident, but also love. Like, you feel the love, you feel good about yourself. People that I get to experience the sabrosura, I’ll say, “Do you feel it in your body right now?” and they’ll say, “Yes.” I go, like, “Where?”

“Stomach, chest.”

“What are you feeling?”

“Heat.”

That’s self love, physical self love. So, really, what brought me to Cuba, if we really look at it in a deeper way, was that they had the knowledge to heal my body. And seduce me at the same time.

Lewis Howes:               Exactly. That’s great! Now, how long were you there and allowing yourself to experience all this?

Chen Lizra:                   It started with trips of two weeks, and then it grew into up to two months and four months a year, for thirteen years.

Lewis Howes:               Wow! When do you think we started to lose the connection with our body? And why do we lose that connection in general?

Chen Lizra:                   Oh, that’s a really good question. The really interesting thing is, going to Cuba, this is what fascinates me about Cuba. It’s like taking a time machine back. So, I take a time machine back and I experience the way things were. And then I take it back here, and I see the way we live. And in that you understand many things.

So, what happened to us, gradually, is that we wanted to become more effective, we wanted to be more productive, we wanted to produce more, we wanted to achieve more, we wanted to have more, we wanted to sell more, we wanted to market more, capitalism. That’s what happened to us. So, as that happened we had to start giving up things.

So we gave up romance, we don’t have time for romance, people don’t have time for romance, mostly. They’re too busy running fast. Some people don’t have time for their kids. We want to achieve, we want to fulfil ourselves and it’s not a bad thing. It’s all about balance. If you notice, more and more people are thinking too much, and not feeling enough.

And that’s where you start to see people also get sick, because the body signals when we’re out of balance. But then they don’t listen to the signals, they shove caffeine, they shove medication, and they keep going, but the body tells you to stop. And you’re not listening, so what is the body going to do? Make you sicker.

Lewis Howes:               Shut down, make you sick, depressed, anxious.

Chen Lizra:                   Right. Which is what we’re seeing today.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah. Wow. And what happens when we rediscover our natural sensuality or our body’s [natural sensuality]?

Chen Lizra:                   It’s not just sensuality, right? It’s basically this: so we’ve got the five elements of somatic intelligence. It’s really about coming back to our true nature. So when we’re in true nature, everything’s balanced and we’re at our optimal place. And we have to keep the elements balanced and we have to also think about the fact that we have to balance between material and social. If one takes over the other, something comes out of balance.

Lewis Howes:               So what’s our true…

Chen Lizra:                   Nature.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   So, we’ve got five elements.

Lewis Howes:               And you call this somatic intelligence.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, the five elements of somatic intelligence. So, one is elegance. I’m not talking about clothing, I’m talking about our being. So, elegance is the possession of ourselves. The quietness of being ourselves. It’s when you’ve got that, you know, the past generations, the way they were and the way they behaved, they had elegance in their being. Obama is very elegant.

Lewis Howes:               Very elegant.

Chen Lizra:                   In how he behaves, right? And we admire him for that.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   He’s like a role model for in the being. I’m not just talking about, you can just mute him and look, there’s something about his being that says, elegance. The same with Michele Obama, right? So that’s the element of confidence.

Intention is the one that is connected to meaning and drive. So, I always get up at the end. So, when we think,”intention”, if I’m let’s say, standing right now like this, what does my body say?

Lewis Howes:               Maybe unsure, or quiet or reserved or shy.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly. Or avoiding. But I’m not in the situation. And now, what am I saying, I’m going to shift it. So, now what am I saying?

Lewis Howes:               More confidence, I guess, more interested, more elegant.

Chen Lizra:                   So what I did is, I went from avoiding into being in the situation. The intention is always forward going and it’s the element of doing. It’s like we’re right there and it’s the goal and it’s the thing, the energy goes there. So when the body is towards there, it’s like, “Ha!” Right?

Now, sematically, if your body is in that position, then you’re really already getting yourself to be there because it changes the chemistry in our body. So you know how Amy Cuddy talks about the Power Pose, right? So if I put people into elegance, which is the being, and I put them into two minutes of elegance, and I will ask them at the beginning, “How do you feel right no about your confidence?” before we do that. If they’re feeling really bad, they will describe it between zero and four, if they’re having a really bad day.

By the end of it, they’ll say probably six to eight. Because the chemistry in the body changes in two minutes, which changes the behaviour, which changes the results. So, this is the being, the quiets, the noise and the turmoil, right? And this is the doing. So it’s like they’re going and they’re doing and they have to balance each other. If I’m just too much intention, I’m not really…

Lewis Howes:               You’re not balanced.

Chen Lizra:                   Yes, if I’m really elegant, what’s missing right now?

Lewis Howes:               The doing, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   But if I’ve got both, then I’m with the intention and I’ve got that thing that calms down the nerves and all these things.

Lewis Howes:               So, having that slight doing elegance calms nerves? Is that what you said?

Chen Lizra:                   No, the elegance calms nerves. The doing doesn’t calm the nerves. You get the nerves because you’re doing and you’re taking risks and stuff. But when we have the elegance in there, it balances the doing and it creates… If I’m going into meetings and I’m feeling nervous, I put tons of elegance in and it quiets the system. Then I come in more balanced.

Lewis Howes:               So that’s intention.

Chen Lizra:                   Intention. The next one is tempo, which is the element of enjoyment. So, tempo, let’s say that this is the tempo that we take. It doesn’t matter if it’s slow or fast, it works for both, right? Most people now, their tempo of their body is addiction. Addiction to the race of the pace.

So I’ll give them a thing, they get there, and they’re already thinking of the next thing, and they haven’t gotten there, they’re already like, “No, I want to get, ta ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta.” But if I take enjoyment, I’m enjoying myself, I’m enjoying the journey, versus, got there. It’s the same tempo.

One, there’s no enjoyment, and then the one, I’m taking the juice of life, which is all about, I’m not just about getting to the end goal. I’m going to enjoy also the journey, which is what happens to us with stress, anxiety and depression that we get so about…

Lewis Howes:               The next step, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, that we’re not there. We’re not present any more. So this is the tempo, and when I change your tempo, I can change your tempo, and that would release endorphins and dopamine and in the session you start to feel good, because you’re high now. Right, because I slow you down a little bit. We’re running faster than the natural tempo.

Lewis Howes:               And I break that down into just celebrating the small wins of your day. Like, what are you grateful for in the morning, every single, you know, every little win, as opposed to waiting for the end journey and the big goal at the end. What’s smiling at someone on the street, appreciating that moment.

Chen Lizra:                   That’s enjoyment. That’s when you’re really enjoying your life and you’re not trying to get to the end goal, where you’re going to die anyway.

Lewis Howes:               Exactly. You can’t take anything with you anyways.

Chen Lizra:                   No. When people live life like it’s a try life, but what about the years that you’re going through? Those are the ones that count. So then you have the sabrosura, and the sabrosura is like I said, it’s the sensuality that sits in self love. So it’s connected to love.

And the sabrasura, is, as you can see, it’s not just any sensuality, because, I can just move with sensuality, okay? That’s sensuality, but it’s something different if I move with the sabrosura, right? And I’m doing the female one right now. And what is that? It’s because when I’m looking at my hands, I’m looking at them as if they’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

And that’s where self love is. I’m not going, like, “My fingers look like really fat, and I hate them and I don’t like my nails.” And that, whatever we think translates into how we also move. Because if I look at the flaws, then I’m missing the beauty of it, I’m missing the love. And that also affects…

Lewis Howes:               It’s how we look a ourselves. It’s how we think about, our self talk and our inner thoughts.

Chen Lizra:                   Negative self talk, or positive, but that’s one aspect of it. The other aspect of it, is also when we talk about containing other people. And you know, when people get, let’s say, aggressive, when we talk about men or taking things away, so what do they have really strong, which element right now?

Lewis Howes:               Their intention.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly. So they have a really strong intention, they know what they want. What’s missing?

Lewis Howes:               Elegance.

Chen Lizra:                   One. Right. That place of respect, of honour, of being a gentleman. What else is missing?

Lewis Howes:               Well, they’re not playful, I guess, if they’re being aggressive, but the beauty of it.

Chen Lizra:                   Well, sabrosura, love. Love is about bettering off the other person. It’s not about taking something. So, it’s not really the elements that we need to tone down if you see there’s a minus and a plus, it’s which ones are missing, that balance it. So if we look, and I’ll explain to you mystery in a minute. If we look, for example, and let’s look at a culture now, not a person. If we look at the US, which element is super strong right now?

Lewis Howes:               When we look at the US? I mean, the intention, right?

Chen Lizra:                   Right. What’s missing, what got turned down, lately?

Lewis Howes:               The love, the elegance.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly. So if we think Obama to Trump, those got turned down. And this is why it’s not working. You have to keep them in balance to be in true nature. And mystery, that’s the trickiest one, because this is where, not just a playfulness is, but that’s where the seduction is. And that’s where there’s that energy of, “Mm-hm, yeah!” And that’s where people get scared, because there’s a grey area there. You can’t really box it, because it’s a life energy.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah. How do you seduce people, or have that element of seduction, that playfulness, at work, on the streets, with friends, without crossing boundaries? Without #MeToo coming up or someone saying something of like, “You’re being too aggressive,” or, “That’s across the line.” How do you know when seductive is across the line?

Chen Lizra:                   Let’s start with what I call keeping the maybe alive. And I’ll explain to you, there’s one more section of this that we missed that’s really important that will make it all sit for you really well. So, let’s start with the fact that…

Lewis Howes:               There’s a no, and there’s a no that’s a maybe, right? There’s a no that’s a no.

Chen Lizra:                   There’s a no that’s a no and then there’s a no that means maybe.

Lewis Howes:               Well, how do you know the difference.?

Chen Lizra:                   Right, so let’s start with what is the no that means maybe. Because that’s where everybody… That’s the grey area.

Lewis Howes:               Someone says no, but they’re still flirting and playful at the same time.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, so if I’m a woman, and, let’s say, I’m interested in you, but I want you to chase me, then a no that means maybe might be like, “No.” And I just said no, but I left you a maybe there so that you’ll come after me, right? The problem is, when people come and take forcefully. Because, if we take away flirting, how are people supposed to interact for love?

And you see that problem in North America in many places, where suddenly it’s like it’s awkward and they don’t know what to do and what’s allowed and what’s not allowed and it’s, like Esther Perel talks about this, about the fact that there are no rules any more. And it’s good and it’s bad, right? And so, we start with the fact that flirting should be okay. Now let’s put another rule here.

Lewis Howes:               In the workplace, or no?

Chen Lizra:                   At work, let’s separate two things, there’s working with your boss. That’s not supposed to be flirty, that’s supposed to be about work. And we don’t seduce a boss into what we need to do, when it’s about work. I charm them into what I want to do.

Charm is something different. It’s very seductive. It’s the way we talked about, for example, before, about trailers or anything else in seduction or in business when you’re trying to get them to sign up and you’re making it hard to get, right? So charm.

Lewis Howes:               It’s not a sexual thing, it’s a charming, a fun.

Chen Lizra:                   So let’s talk, for example, Oprah. Give me four words that describe the essence of Oprah.

Lewis Howes:               Elegant, empathetic, powerful, purposeful.

Chen Lizra:                   So, I would describe her as powerful, no doubt. Authentic. That’s one of the key things for Oprah. Everybody knows authentic, you trust what she says. Doesn’t matter if she’s going to give you tomorrow tell you McDonalds is healthy, you buy it from Oprah, because she’s authentic, right?

So authentic and powerful and there’s that empathetic thing where she penetrates to your heart with what she says, right. Three, and then purposeful, right? She has purpose. So, those are, it’s like a brand. People are like brands, and that’s Oprah. And when she uses what I call her social charm, she gets success.

We all have it, right? We see it in kids when they’re really young, they start to activate that thing and they’re doing that cute thing that they do, and you can’t say no to them. And each kid is different. It’s not the same for everybody, it depends on their personality. But what do we do? We tell them at one point, “Enough! It’s time to grow up!” Why? Teach them how to use it in a smart way, not for manipulation, but for success, because it’s built into your body and the people who have gone into adulthood and learned how to use that, are super successful.

Lewis Howes:               Right. Yeah. There you go. What is the last thing you wanted to say, about this

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, so, about this one, we got a plus and a minus for each one.

Lewis Howes:               And for those who were just listening, there’s elegance, intention, tempo, sabrosura and mystery.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah. The five elements. Okay, so there’s a plus and minus to each one of them.

Lewis Howes:               Like turning a knob up or down.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly. And when they’re in the right, optimal place, that’s where the flow happens naturally. Where something goes in a really healthy way and that’s where we dare to be us more, that’s where we have a deeper connection, that’s where the magic happens. So, how do we know where these should be?

Lewis Howes:               Good question.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly! The key question. So, the way we know, is because it’s specific to us. It’s not a generic thing that goes around the world and everybody has to be the same way. And it goes according to three things. Life stage.

So, when is this meeting me? In my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and so on. What am I going through in my life? Are you guy right now on that sofa with the $100 in your pocket and it’s like…? Or are you now, where you’re the head of The School of Greatness. It meets you in a different way.

Cultural identity. So you’re American. You lived your life probably the whole time in the US?

Lewis Howes:               Most of it, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   You’ve travelled a lot.

Lewis Howes:               And I’ve seen a lot of stuff.

Chen Lizra:                   You’ve seen a lot of stuff and that opened up your view on life, so you don’t meet the elements the same way as someone American who grew up here, and lived their whole life just here, will meet them. You might see the mystery and not get scared like someone who’s afraid of sexual harassment. Right?

So, cultural identity. And when we look at this, like, think about it for a moment. If I put a Brazilian in here, cultural identity, what would be the element that they’re most comfortable with?

Lewis Howes:               Probably either one of these two.

Chen Lizra:                   Mystery, right? They’ve got the samba and they’ve got the seduction, so this is where it’s really comfortable for them. I put a British person right here. How would they feel?

Lewis Howes:               Very uncomfortable.

Chen Lizra:                   Where would they feel comfortable?

Lewis Howes:               Elegance.

Chen Lizra:                   Right. That’s your cultural identity. And then some people might say, “But that’s a generalization,” right? Well, yeah, of course, because we’ve got one more element in here. Well, what happens if that Brazilian had British parents? What was your upbringing? Self identity?

Lewis Howes:               Yeah, it’ll be a little different.

Chen Lizra:                   Right. So, self identity is your personality, it’s the values you grew up with at home, it’s how much love you got at home? Are you a man or a woman, which makes you feel differently. So, when we put that into the mix, that really affects how we meet those elements for us.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah. And it’s also like our history, past traumas, different experiences we’ve had, all those things can either hold us back or make us more comfortable about one of these things. Very cool! Let’s talk a little bit more about how men can connect with people in general without crossing any boundaries.

If we talk about in work, by charming people and not seducing people sexually, how do we know the difference, in work, if it’s someone of power, are they charming someone or are they seducing someone, can a charm look like a seduction?

Chen Lizra:                   It can. But the question is…

Lewis Howes:               Is that crossing the line, how do we know what’s…

Chen Lizra:                   Here’s the thing: You can’t put a hard line on seduction 100% and control it, and this is the mistake they’re now creating laws that say, “No means no and when there’s no more no, that means maybe.” Well, what are you going to do?

Lewis Howes:               The seduction is gone.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah. And then the sexual energy is gone and that’s part of what affects our vitality in life, and it’s known that people die, if they don’t have sexual energy, they die at an earlier age. It’s already been proven, you know, with research. So we can’t really lock that life energy, and we can’t really contain it. But what we can do is educate. So, let’s start with the fact that, if some men, and obviously not all men, cross lines in a very aggressive way, what is missing? The intention. If I’m there to better you off…

Lewis Howes:               Then you’re not going to be aggressive.

Chen Lizra:                   I’m not going to be aggressive, I’m going to meet you, I’m going to be respectful, because I’m going to be elegant, and then I’m going to allow for a no, and a maybe and a yes, whatever comes my way. But I’m not going to take something from you. So, at the end of the day, if I gave you energy, that’s also in sex.

Like, if you’re there to better off the person, then you leave them feeling full. You don’t take something away from them. Then the lines are not so problematic. It’s problematic when you start to take aggressively. And people are taking, rather than giving. That’s where we went wrong.

Lewis Howes:               I take what I want, I’m going to get what I want, as opposed to giving.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, if you’re giving, we don’t really have a problem, because whatever you did, that person left feeling good. When you’re taking, that’s what it’s switched into. Not a connection, I’m going to take. Then it doesn’t work.

Lewis Howes:               If you have the mindset that, “I’m going to leave everyone better off after I’m around them,” when I’m gone, I’m going to leave them with a good experience, that’s a good intention.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, so, if you came on to a woman, and let’s say she didn’t want to, but you were with the intention of leaving her better off, what’s she going to feel at the end?

Lewis Howes:               She’s going to feel, like, “Man, I really like that feeling, I want to be with that guy. I want to talk to him.”

Chen Lizra:                   Or, “Thank you, that felt really good. That was a nice compliment.” I’m not going to say no, but thank you. A guy stopped me, I don’t know, last year. I came, I was practicing elegance, and I practice these somatics in the supermarket, and it was really funny, because if I’m standing, okay, I’m a dancer, I look like this. But if I’m practicing elegance, then I look like this.

Lewis Howes:               It’s subtle.

Chen Lizra:                   It’s subtle, but it changes. And now everything changes in how I feel inside. Right? So I was practicing elegance, and I’m going and I’m doing my things and this and that, and I get out to my car and I’m packing the food, and the guy comes and he says, “Look, I just want to tell you something. I’m married and I don’t want anything, but you left quite an impression on me,” and walked away.

Lewis Howes:               There you go.

Chen Lizra:                   And I said, “Wow. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?” And this is what we’re killing right now, with the, “Men are not allowed to come on to women,” and nothing is allowed. Really? Why not teach people, like, for men, how to be gentlemen and for women to hold their power again. That’s what we’ve lost, that went wrong.

Lewis Howes:               Wow. Yeah. And how do we know how to find if we’re disconnected to our bodies? If we’ve lost this elegance that you’ve just showed, how do we know when we’ve lost it?

Chen Lizra:                   Well, first of all, your body speaks to you all the time about what you need. Are you listening to it? And you’ll know if you’re listening or not, because it’s either that you’re following things that your body tells you, it signals when you’re sick, it signals when you need to sleep, it signals when you’re thirsty, it signals when you’re not feeling good.

Lewis Howes:               You’re stressed, anxious.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, now what are you doing with that? Are you just shutting it down, shoving things, you know, medication, caffeine, ignoring things? Or are you stopping for a minute and going, “You know what? I’m not feeling so well. What am I feeling right now? Why did I get upset in that situation just now? That shouldn’t have upset me. What just happened? Why am I feeling what I’m feeling?” And work through it. See what is going on. And then as you start to follow the body, then you know that you’re really connected to it. But most people don’t listen.

Lewis Howes:               How do you think we create that awareness, to listen. Is it just noticing when we’re feeling off, and just taking a moment to notice and write down our feelings? Is it to talk about it? Is it to just be aware? For someone on autopilot, how do we become aware?

Chen Lizra:                   Well first of all, send them all to me, I’ll teach them! But, I think that you have to create somatic awareness. That’s what it is, right? Somatic awareness comes in many different forms. And it’s not just to say that you have to study somatic intelligence. But you could use yoga, and you could use, you know, what Tony Robbins teaches, to delve in. There’s so many different methods that you could use to create awareness.

But, for me, it’s really like, my day, I know that you do gratitude, you said it before. I start my day with a short meditation in the morning, every morning, and one of the things I meditate on is the centre of confidence and security. A sense of when you have something really strong in the centre.

Sometimes, if I feel a lot of rambling, I’ll check what the little girl needs, because we all have a little girl or a little boy. And I’ll just, what I love doing, if I feel something’s going on is seeing in front of her, holding hands, and then giving her my energy, to lift her up so that she comes to where I’m at. Sometimes she meets me and gives me energy.

But that visualisation, if I feel I need it, gives me a check of where I am at that moment. Am I starting to take good, do I have things that bother me, and taking those five minutes or ten minutes, shows me what I need to do. And then there’s the gratitude. And every morning starts with gratitude right after.

So it’s really about going in, paying attention, taking a moment and setting the intention. If I set the intention, the whole day’s different. I don’t just get up and brush my teeth and go do my work. I start with creating the intention for today, then I start the day. So, if I checked what was going on, I already know what is going on.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah. I think intention is so important. If we don’t have intention, we’re just walking through on autopilot and we’re not being mindful of how we’re feeling, our thoughts, our energy and how we’re treating other people. So I think intention is something, in the spirituality world, you hear a lot, and it might seem a little, whooey, but I think it’s important.

I do that in my meditation practice. How do I want to show up today, when things go well, and when things don’t go well? How do I want to react? Do I want to be elegant? When someone cuts me off in the traffic on the 405. Or do I want to scream and be on autopilot and try to get in front of them and be competitive?

And I think it’s really important to always think of that, because otherwise it’s hard to get off autopilot, unless we’re being intentional.

Chen Lizra:                   And we can’t always do it perfect, that’s another thing to remember. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have days when you have a meltdown. You just have to, right, we all do, I mean, even the people who teach and do amazing things and stuff, everybody has those days, but do you come back to your intention?

Lewis Howes:               Right. I had one of those last week.

Chen Lizra:                   Tell me about it. Don’t be afraid to share.

Lewis Howes:               You know, and it also doesn’t feel good afterwards. I’m like, “Why did I react that way?” And it’s like, I don’t want to be that way, it’s not who I truly am, it’s not my true nature,” as you talked about. And it doesn’t leave my experience better than when I left it, it created a worse experience with the other person, with myself, my energy throughout the day, it’s not supporting my vision.

Chen Lizra:                   But you revisited it, and you checked, and you saw what it is, and you owned it. And then out of that you created a new intention. That’s the process.

Lewis Howes:               Take responsibility and move forward. Yeah, exactly. What’s the difference, for you, between sensuality and sexuality?

Chen Lizra:                   Sexuality, for me, is about being sexual, which means it’s that energy of sex and something very primal and it’s sexual. Sensuality is about being, for me, you’re asking for me, it’s about being more feminine and soft and connecting to that place where I’m more vulnerable, or I let somebody see me in a way that’s softer and it’s not just this strength. It’s that place that flows in a whole other way.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah, that’s cool. And it’s almost more seductive, then.

Chen Lizra:                   In my opinion it is.

Lewis Howes:               Sensuality is more seductive.

Chen Lizra:                   And, by the way, this is a tip for the guys. There are a lot of guys today that come on to women in a very sexual way. And it puts off women, because, what attracts them a lot more, like you said, that’s a lot more seductive for us too, right? If a man is being more sensual with a woman than sexual, she doesn’t feel like a piece of meat.

Lewis Howes:               How can a man be more sensual, in order to attract a female partner better? What’s an approach?

Chen Lizra:                   Come more from the heart, show more caring and love and interest in a woman, you know, be and do things that charm. Right, if you’re doing something really nice, where you’re courting a woman, that used to be the norm in the past, where you court a woman. It wasn’t like, “I’ll send you a text and we’ll meet tonight for some booty call.”

It was like, “I’ll come an wait for you outside for thirty minutes until I catch you.” It was like there was chivalry in it. That’s a lot more attractive. And it doesn’t need to be crazy beg, but it’s when you’re making an effort for the other person, when you’re, when everybody wants to be seen these days, we all want to be seen, and when you feel like someone sees you, your you, then it touches your heart, then you’re more attracted to it.

Lewis Howes:               Then it’s more sensual and more seductive. Yeah, I like that. How do we cultivate charm? Because charm, I think, is something that gets us anything we want. It’s what gets us the upgrade to first class, it gets us the nicest hotel room, it gets us the free meal, it gets us the raise at our job, it gets us clients, it gets us all these things, right? Charm is kind of what I live by.

Chen Lizra:                   I was about to say, when we did the whole before thing, it was like, “You use your charm really well.”

Lewis Howes:               I really didn’t have anything, except for charm, and it was like, creating something from nothing. It’s like, “How do I create something when I don’t have all these things. I didn’t have a degree, I didn’t have money, I was on my sister’s couch. Why would anyone say yes? I had to charm. I’m not manipulating, it was just like playful, mystery, fun, cultivating joy within other people and calling out that childlike play. How do we cultivate that more?

Chen Lizra:                   Well, let’s start with the fact that you said it wasn’t a manipulation. So, remember when we said it’s about bettering off people? Not just in dating, but also in these situations. People can feel your intention whether it’s pure or not. When you come to do something, they feel whether you’re trying to get something, you’re playing with them or they can feel it’s pure. Unless you’re an Oscar nominated actor or actress.

Lewis Howes:               People are very intuitive. We’re very intuitive at the end of the day.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly. We can feel it. We can feel it. So, you came with a good intention. Let’s start with that. And that’s already charming, because there’s something with the Oprah authenticity where people feel someone’s trying to cause something good. When we feel someone is on purpose, they’re on a mission to do something and it’s good, that’s already enrolling.

The other thing is, well, how did you find your charm?

Lewis Howes:               How did I find it? I think I just always knew or I could always feel what was missing in others. So if it was someone like a customer service at a desk who’d been yelled at all day, I just try to bring them joy and peace, and tell them, you’re doing a great job, because I think they’re not acknowledged enough. At the airport or at a hotel or whatever it may be, like that.

So it always came from a place of, “You worked really hard and I want to acknowledge you.” I think acknowledgement and being seen is something we all want. And I just want to be very in tune to what’s missing, and try to bring the opposite, essentially. I try to bring joy and play and having fun, because that’s what a lot of people want to do, they just want to play. But we don’t get to it a lot of the times.

Chen Lizra:                   Right. So what you really did, was find what they were lacking and then give it to them. Remember what I talked about in my TED Talk. And then give it to them, then you gave it to them until they got seduced. But people think it’s about seduction and sex, you remember, the manipulation.

But we do this all the time in a good way too. It’s not always about the negative stuff. So, what you did, was meet them where they are, and understood what they were missing and then you gave it to them and you were playful and it’s fun to play. So you reacted to different things.

Lewis Howes:               Right. But it was never sexual, like touching someone.

Chen Lizra:                   No. That’s the mistake. We think that seduction, remember I said at the beginning, always has to  be sexual. It doesn’t mean that it  has to be sexual. Someone coming and being playful, and joking with you, and making you laugh, that’s super seductive. You want to play with that, it’s an energy that’s captivating.

But there’s one aspect that you didn’t say, which was also there. You already knew what your charm was, it was just, you didn’t always use it. And this is really interesting, because when I started asking a lot of people who don’t use their charm, or are hiding their charm, why, then a lot of them were afraid that if they would use their charm, they would be seen as being manipulative. So you see a lot of successful people, if you ask them, some of them say, “Well, I only pull that card when I need it, but I don’t want people to know this.”

Lewis Howes:               That’s manipulative. Like if you only use it like you’re…

Chen Lizra:                   No, not necessarily. Meaning, pulling it out and I’m now in a meeting, like you say, and now I’m being charming, and it works and it goes and the deal goes through. I pull that card when I need it, but afraid. We don’t need to be afraid to be us. That’s exactly what you’re saying.

It feels manipulative if you’re not like that all the time. We can just bring it out. We can just give that fear up. They’re using it in a good way. But, afraid. And other people just turn it down, because they’re afraid of being seen as manipulative.

Lewis Howes:               I just feel like we’ve got to cultivate it more. You know, if someone charms me, it’s just makes it more fun. I feel like we’re like big kids that want to play in a sand box and play around all day.

Chen Lizra:                   Oh, you would fall in love with Cuba. Because in Cuba they all live with it on the outside, they don’t ever shut it down.

Lewis Howes:               That would be fun! All day long, just dancing. You’re just dancing through life. And that’s what we all want to do, I think, but we feel held back, and we feel like it’s not acceptable, it’s not… I don’t know. It’s unfortunate. What do you say to people when they believe that vulnerability and sensuality is weakness?

Chen Lizra:                   Oh, that’s a really good question. Vulnerability is not weakness, it’s when we don’t have the elements calibrated right. I’ll show it to you somatically, you’ll understand. So, if I’m now, I don’t have elegance, and I’m just really open and vulnerable and it’s like, “Ah, yes, this…” then it feels like I’m too much.

But if I have my power now, and now I’m vulnerable, it balances out, right? Because elegance gives us a certain protection and emotional sturdiness, and it allows us to open up. And the connection between the two of them makes it work. But if I’m just super elegant and there isn’t that softness, then I look stiff and hard, right? But when I add that vulnerability, it softens it up. It’s the same if I just let go of the elegance and I’m just open and I’m right there and then people can just consider you weak. But together…

Lewis Howes:               Yeah, because you don’t have the elegance with it, right.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, they work together. So it’s when we are not calibrated right that people see that. I can have full power, like, intention and everything, and be soft. It’s not one or the other, and one of the problems is that nowadays we think, and I think that’s also a big problem for women, is that women had to compete in the business world, and they were being treated as if, when they showed their femininity they were being weak. So they learned to turn it off and then be tougher.

Lewis Howes:               Be more assertive and in control.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, but they locked their femininity away also at home, because of that. because when you lock it, you lock it. You don’t lock it only in one place, normally. You lock it. And then the world changed. I mean, look at Gal Gadot and Wonderwoman. We now see models of women that can be super strong and feminine. So we don’t need any more of that place. This is the new leadership of the 2018 and on. We can be that strong. I don’t need to give up my strength, but I can be soft.

Lewis Howes:               Right. And in the reverse, you know, for men who are trained in sports, in football, for me, we were never allowed to show weakness, we were never allowed to show vulnerability. We were never allowed to cry or act soft and so we wonder why some of the men in our society have not been able to turn it off after practice of four to six hours a day of being so tough and so hard, all of a sudden it’s supposed to come back and be these vulnerable, open, expressive, caring human beings.

They should be able to do that, but they’ve been conditioned not to. And like you said, just for women it’s hard to turn it off. It’s harder to turn it back on, the vulnerability, for men as well.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, yeah! And the body always practices something. The somatic body always practices, so if you’re practicing being tough, then you’re practicing it everywhere, so then it becomes a habit. And the more you practice, the more it becomes.

So, you, for example, are very vulnerable now, because you worked on yourself and you opened up in ways that you never opened up before and this is what taught you about new masculinity. “Oh, I don’t have to be like that. I’ve been conditioned in a certain way,” that’s cultural conditioning. I can shift that, right? And it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Masculinity in 2018, like femininity needs to be something completely different. It needs to be refined.

Lewis Howes:               I think also, just being able to balance both of them. How do we balance them both, where we can turn it on, being stronger, being more assertive when we need to, to not be taken advantage of or other things, and then also being  vulnerable or open in other times. I think it’s hard to balance it.

Chen Lizra:                   Well, because we have different situations in this mix, we’ll work different in different situations. For example, if you’re now in a business meeting, you might not be as vulnerable as when you’re with your girlfriend. That’s normal. So you’re turning maybe more elegant right now, and a little bit more in possession of yourself, and turning down some of that vulnerability, because you don’t need it, but then you come out, then you can go, “Okay, turn this one a little bit down, turn this one a little bit up.”

Lewis Howes:               Turn the knobs a little bit. How do you teach people to do that if they don’t know how?

Chen Lizra:                   I teach them through the body. The interesting thing is that when you’re teaching people through the head, then they get it, but they don’t get it.

Lewis Howes:               They don’t feel it.

Chen Lizra:                   Exactly. Think if I said to you now, let’s say you’ve never fallen in love. And I’ll explain to you how it feels to fall in love.

Lewis Howes:               Like, “Yeah, I get it.”

Chen Lizra:                   “I get it. It’s cool! Sounds amazing!” but you’ve never had the feeling. One time falling in love goes through your body and you’re like, “Whoa! That was amazing!” right? Like, “Whoohoo! Amazing!”

So it’s the same kind of thing. When you feel through the body, this is why somatic work is so powerful, then you understand faster the lesson. You tell a child, “Don’t touch this, this is going to burn. Don’t touch this. Don’t touch this,” they touch, “Ouch!!” They don’t touch it again.

Lewis Howes:               Right, they feel it, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   But they had to touch it to understand what you meant. Right? And that always happens. So, when we feel things through the body, we understand faster. I’m coaching or I’m doing retreats or anything that I do, I get people to experience it. I get them into the elegance, or I’ll work them with sabrosura, and then when they feel it, they get it. And then they understand also what it gives to their lives.

But I also take it, you know, when I’m working one on one, I do somatic intelligence assessment and based on the assessment I see which elements are weak, and then I start to turn those elements up. And as I do that something starts to flow better because it balances the other ones.

And when it’s in workshops and retreats, it’s a process that’s designed for groups, so you’re going through that wave and it meets you where you are and there are things that cover different things, and you come into that wave where you are and it gets everybody through that, right? Until the end process.

Lewis Howes:               Where everyone’s just these elegant, flowing human beings of love.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, like imagine that we’re doing the Power of the Sabrosura retreat in Havana, in Cuba, and there are going to be 20 women and ten instructors, and you’re teaching them, for example, let’s say sabrosura, and teachers are going around and correcting you. But we teach you also the elegance and how to combine those energies and how to have the intention.

We teach you how to walk in a way that uses all these elements. We take you to the streets because you’re going to get tons of comments. In Cuba. In Cuba, it’s still old school so it’s safe, and then you get the response and men treat women like they’re beautiful and they give them compliments, and then when you’re using that, you get more compliments, so you know it’s working.

So there’s that enhanced learning from it. And at the same time you learn it through the body, you start to embody it. By the time you leave you’re like a different person. You touch parts of yourself that you didn’t know that existed. You’re opening internal doors where you don’t usually dare to go because you’re afraid.

Lewis Howes:               Men and women go?

Chen Lizra:                   That one is for women. The retreat in Marakkech is for men and women. That’s the power of enjoyment. So, teaching people how to live with enjoyment, how to live with gratitude, how to develop the mindset of super positivity, where bad things come to you and you turn them into a plus. Like Amy Puddy, I love the podcast you did with her. How did she take a situation where everything was falling apart and she turned it into one of the biggest successes in the world.

A year ago I had a really bad injury with my arm. And it got so bad that I got steroids injected into an injury and we lost control of my arm, and the doctor told me that she didn’t know if I would gain control back of my arm. And it’s my strong arm. And I’m a dancer. And she was like, “Full stop, two months, you can’t move.”

Lewis Howes:               If you want a chance to have this come back.

Chen Lizra:                   If you want a chance to have this back. And I went, “Pause.” And I sat at home and it was like…

Lewis Howes:               And you teach about how to move your body!

Chen Lizra:                   And I can’t do anything with my body. My body, my tool, just broke. And I’m sitting there, and I’m going, “Okay, right, or left?” Right means get depressed, my life just been destroyed. I’ve lost my arm right now, I don’t know if I’m getting it back. I’m sitting two months at home and I can’t do anything. This is insane.

Lewis Howes:               Can’t move it at all.

Chen Lizra:                   Or, I’m going to take the same energy, and I’m going to do the best that I can and this is going to be personal development for two months, which I chose, because I’m here.

Lewis Howes:               You trained the mind, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   And as a result, the power of somatic intelligence probably, I’m assuming, came out about three years before. Right, that’s the super positivity, where you take that thing that could… And everybody was like, “How come you’re not depressed at home?” and I said, “Well, if I sit depressed, is that going to be productive? Is that going to get me anywhere? Is that going to improve my physical condition? Then I have a choice.”

I can choose to take it as my growth. It came my way, okay, yes I didn’t want it, I didn’t ask for it, but life is not like that. You get many quirks that you don’t ask for. Maybe tomorrow, God forbid, I lose my legs or I die, or I don’t know what, someone important dies, to me. I can’t control that, but what I learn from this, how I grow from this, is what I can control.

Lewis Howes:               Wow. That was last year you say?

Chen Lizra:                   That was a year ago, in March.

Lewis Howes:               It probably gave you time to reflect and think about it and optimise your systems and optimise everything, what’s working, what’s not working and how do I…

Chen Lizra:                   And look for inspiration, and look deeper inside and make myself more effective and grow with that time and make something inside, and ask myself why, if we have a somatic problem, then it’s usually an indication to something that goes inside.

So my question was, “What am I ignoring inside me, that’s not working right now, that my body is screaming out so loud? What have I locked?” And to really search and find what it is. And what it was is that I wasn’t working on even getting into a relationship. I pushed it aside. And the body screams out, “Enough! It’s not balanced! You’re talking about balance? Well, hello!”

Lewis Howes:               Have you been in a relationship now?

Chen Lizra:                   I’m not yet, but I’m open to it, now.

Lewis Howes:               You’re attracting the relationship you want, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   I’m calling him to find me.

Lewis Howes:               You’re charming him.

Chen Lizra:                   “I’m here!” The difference is not necessarily whether you result it already, it’s where you are. Whether you’re locking it, there’s that door that you locked, or whether it’s open. There have been people that came into my life since, and it hasn’t been a good fit yet, but I’m open to it.

Lewis Howes:               You’re exploring it, you’re going down the path, as opposed to saying, “I’m good.”

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, yeah. Pushing it aside, remember we talked about the mystery and that closing of the life energy? It’s like, if you close something, it’s going to explode somewhere else. So this was an indication of something going on here that the somatic body will always come out with a symptom as big as what you’re hiding.

Lewis Howes:               Man, that’s powerful. The body will always create something that you’re hiding.

Chen Lizra:                   It’ll show you.

Lewis Howes:               It will manifest, you’ll feel the stress, the pain, the tightness, the whatever. Your arm locking.

Chen Lizra:                   It will manifest, yeah. Like, where do we go? Where do we go when that happens? “Why me? Why is it happening to me?”

Lewis Howes:               Or medication, or drugs.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, “This is unfair. The world is unfair.” And then we get depressed. Well, ask yourself, what are you doing in your life? How are you causing this right now? What have you done that led your body to scream out so loud?

Lewis Howes:               Yeah. Do you think the arm was as a result of not opening up to a potential for relationship?

Chen Lizra:                   Part of it, yeah. For sure, yes. And it’s interesting, because I’ve done so much soul searching and checking and stuff like that, and I’ve released places that I was holding back and, “Oh, look! That arm is coming back!” Well, it’s not fully there, we’re still in rehabilitation, but it’s coming back, yeah.

Lewis Howes:               That’s great! What else do we need to know about somatic intelligence or seduction that we haven’t talked about yet? That could be useful for us?

Chen Lizra:                   Well, I think, this is a really important thing to know, is that somatic intelligence is built in our body system, in the system. This is not something that I need to teach your body. I need to wake up those certain things in your body.

But it’s already there, because some people go like, “Do you think I could study the sabrosura?” and I go,like, “Okay, let’s think about it in a different way. Let’s say that you’re a child, that was born right now in Japan. And I take that child as soon as that child was born, and I put it in Cuba. Do you think that child is going to have tons of sabrosura?

Lewis Howes:               They’re going to have access to it, right? Yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   Right. But if that baby stays in Japan?

Lewis Howes:               Maybe not as much.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, depends, right? So it’s really cultural conditioning.

Lewis Howes:               It depends. Maybe unless they’re dancing all the time.

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah. You’re right. So it depends on those three things that we said. But if we go with the generalisation, culture wise, then if we put them in one place that has tons they will learn from it, and if we put them in a place… So that tells us, that it’s really inside of our body. We’re all born with it.

So, yes, we can all learn this, because what I did is I just looked at us humans and what exists in all cultures in us human beings and then I extracted it out. And then I started working with it in New York, where Esther came to my workshop, and in Turkey and in Israel, and in different places and then seeing it’s the same for everybody. It just depends on those three things.

So people don’t have a problem, really, connecting with this, it’s more, leaving what we know, right? If I have a cultural conditioning that says, “Oh, this is not allowed. I’m not allowed to be mysterious and playful.” Then I’m afraid to go down that route, but if my culture says that it’s… so it’s really conditioning.

Lewis Howes:               Right. Got it. Okay, this has been fascinating. I’ve got a couple of questions left for you. Where can we, I think you have a free guide, also, that you want to give people? What’s the guide? What do they get?

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah! What I did is I put six insights for embodying your true essence and it’s on somaticgift.com. So if anybody goes to somaticgift.com and they just enter their information, then they’ll see a little video and then they get the six insights straight to their e-mail.

Lewis Howes:               What are those six insights about?

Chen Lizra:                   How to embody your true essence. Practical things that you can already start doing day to day that will change your habits. And they’re structured almost completely, there’s only one element that I didn’t put in, the mystery, because that’s always the hardest one to teach, so it’s better to do it when I’m present. But I gave them tips for all the rest of them, plus one extra one, and then people can start using them. These are actually practical things that they can use.

Lewis Howes:               Okay, somaticgift.com. Okay, cool. This is called The Three Truths, and if this was your final day, many years from now, and you weren’t able to leave any of this stuff behind, this stuff that you’ve been learning and teaching, but you had to take it with you. Everything you’ve created, you had to take it all with you, so no one had access any more.

But you got to write down three things that you knew to be true about your whole experience, that you would share with the world, your three lessons, your three truths, and this is all they would have of yours, access of your information. What would you say are your Three Truths?

Chen Lizra:                   When we live out of our true essence, when we’re in that place where it’s calibrated correctly, we’re at our optimal way of life. And that’s the place where we’re the happiest. Where we feel happiness and satisfaction and love. So, for me, why spend even one more day not finding that place for yourself. You’re not really living as you. That would be one.

One of the biggest things, for me, that would be at the top three, would be enjoyment, you talked about playfulness before. And I think we lose that energy and we are so busy doing and being serious, that enjoyment has to be the same as brushing your teeth. And if you don’t delete that function, and enjoyment is a must every day, then what would your every day look like?

Lewis Howes:               Sad.

Chen Lizra:                   No, no, no, I’m saying, not delete. Didn’t delete it, because most people delete it.

Lewis Howes:               Oh, I’ve got what you’re saying. If you didn’t have it, it’d be sad. If you didn’t delete it, if you have it, it will be playful, be fun and be exciting, it will be expressive, yeah.

Chen Lizra:                   Right, because you’d find a way. So it tells us that what we’re really doing is we’re going, “Delete.” It’s like, “I’ve got kids, I’ve got this, I’ve got that,” but what if we don’t have that option to delete it? What if we don’t give ourselves that option to delete it?

Lewis Howes:               It would be a fun life. It would be amazing.

Chen Lizra:                   Wouldn’t it? So it tells us that it’s an intention within us. It’s a decision we make about life. This is why I created the Power of Enjoyment Retreat. But it’s about not allowing ourselves to give up on fun.

And the third one would have to be self love. Because I think that, with my journey, I showed this to you before, where is it?

Lewis Howes:               The before and after?

Chen Lizra:                   Yeah, the before and after, is that this was me, at the age of twenty, drawing myself and the self portrait of how I saw myself and the trauma that I went through, and this I created after the process, of how I see myself today, and I think that the biggest… If we don’t love ourselves, it’s like we’re robbing ourselves of one of the biggest treasures, of self love.

And when I say self love, I mean also, the negative self talk robs us away from that. So you know, it’s like, I can work with women and they’re looking in the mirror and they’re like, “Oh, my body’s this. Oh my gosh, that, look at the wrinkle here. Oh my gosh, my fingers are like sausages.”

And it’s known, by the way, for women specifically, and you can probably talk about the guys on the other side. But there was a study that was done that discovered that only 4% of women worldwide today feel beautiful, consider themselves beautiful. Four percent! That’s an insane number. It’s supposed to be the other way, 96% feel, and only four… And it’s a distortion. And men have the same problem with their image and masculinity and having to live up to some, but really we’re missing the point.

LIfe is supposed to be about love. I walk on the streets of Cuba, with all of it’s problems. It’s a dictatorship and there are rights that are taken, millions of problems. But you walk on the streets of Cuba, and you feel, love. Between people. And it’s not because I’m there on vacation, I mean, I’ve been going there for thirteen years, and that feeling, of feeling love, I go, “What are we doing as a human race? Where are we putting our energies that we don’t feel love between people?”

And it doesn’t need to be lovey dovey. Just basic love. To see the other person and want to see them good, and walk and see that person who’s feeling bad and lift them up, emotionally and get them to feel a little better. You know, where’s the connection? Where’s the tribe? It’s no wonder that people are feeling so lonely and disconnected and lost.

And it all starts with self love. If I don’t feel good about myself, why would I care about other people and why would I care about the environment and why would I care about anything, really, if I don’t feel good about myself? So, it starts here. So when people say, “Well, what can you do, the world is messed up,” start with you. Be a better person. If we were all better people, then this would be a better world.

Lewis Howes:               Those are good. I love those.

Chen Lizra:                   Thank you.

Lewis Howes:               I want to acknowledge you for a moment, for turning your darkness into beauty, because it’s an amazing transformation just seeing what you thought you look like, versus how you show up now, your elegance, your beauty, your just, true nature. You show up like yourself, like you’re supposed to be. You show up like someone who is living an authentic, loving and enjoying life to the fullest, and you exude that energy.

So I acknowledge you for showing up that way and showing other people how they can do the same thing. Being a great example of turning darkness into light and bringing that out into the world.

Chen Lizra:                   And that’s the journey, right? When we take something that happened, it’s really not about me, really not about me. It’s never been about me. It’s about that example we give people so we can live in greatness. And you do that by choosing a way and then showing people that they can do it too.

Lewis Howes:               That’s right. Yeah. Where can we connect with you on social media? Or online?

Chen Lizra:                   I am all the time on Facebook and Instagram. So people can come and join me there.

Lewis Howes:               Okay, what’s your handle on Instagram?

Chen Lizra:                   @clizra. So, basically just my my name Chen Lizra, C.H.E.N. and then last name, Lizra. But @clizra is the shortcut.

Lewis Howes:               Got it. Cool! Final question for you is: What is your definition of greatness?

Chen Lizra:                   For me, greatness is about, what you just said. I take situations that seem the end of the world, and then I find inspiration in them and then I live it full out like there’s no tomorrow. I mean, if you think of what I’ve gone through, and who I am today. And you’re right, it is authentic. It’s really where I am today, and it took so much work to get here.

And I think greatness is really about getting rid of the ego. It’s not about people now going, “Chen!” It’s nice that you say that to me and it feels good and I let it in, and I feel it and I feel wonderful. And as you were saying this, I’m thinking, “Wow. It’s not my TED with 8 million viewers or the bestselling book, it’s this achievement of saving myself, that’s my biggest achievement today.

But greatness only really turns into greatness, in my opinion, when I can set that example for other people and inspire them. And the choices that we make daily. Because, I mean, I get mad, and I get pissed off when I drive and I honk and I do all those things that everybody else does, but I have a choice, and I know, every morning when I wake up and I set my intention and I set into gratefulness, it’s like I’m living a life that’s great by example for others, and I can see it with what comes back.

Because people tell me, “Wow. You inspire me.” Or people tell me, “I’ve been with you for eight years on this journey,” then you know that you’re inspiring people. And if you’re inspiring people, there’s greatness in it.

And greatness doesn’t mean you’re better than them, that’s the really important thing to know. It’s really humble. And people say that to me sometimes. They go, like, “I really love that you’re humble about it,” and I go, like, “Because it’s not about me.” It’s a purpose, and that purpose is to inspire people to see that in themselves, and if people get inspired it’s because it’s inside them, so how can it be about me?

Lewis Howes:               Great! Make sure you guys check out somaticgift.com, right? Follow you on Instagram and connect with you on social media. Thank you again, so much, for coming on. I appreciate it.

Chen Lizra:                   Thank you for having me.

Lewis Howes:               There you have it, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this one! Again, when you have desires in your life, when you have dreams, when you have something you want to chase, if you don’t understand the power of seduction and the power of charm, the power of moving your body in ways that attract other people’s interest, that attract the things you want, that become a magnet for what you’re looking for in your life, then you’re always going to be one step behind.

So make sure you learn to master the art of seduction in a powerful way, not a harmful way. Master your body in a kind, loving way, not a harmful way. This is what this is all about.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with your friends, lewishowes.com/628 and take a screenshot of this and tag me on Instagram, @LewisHowes, so we can connect over there as well. Super powerful. Loved these insights. Watch the full video interview so you can watch more of Chen moving her body and dancing, she did some other stuff on camera as well. Again, lewishowes.com/628 to watch the full video.

And again, a big thank you to designcrowd.com/greatness. If you’re looking to differentiate yourself in your industry, you’ve got to have unique, quality branding and that’s why I love designcrowd.com/greatness because you can receive hundreds of potential designs back for your logo, for your website for a book cover, whatever it may be, all you need to do is submit a design idea at designcrowd.com/greatness. You get  a special $100 VIP offer for our listeners, and you’ll get tons of potential great designs back very quickly. Make sure to check it out: designcrowd.com/greatness.

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Again, Albert Camus said that, “Charm is a way of getting the answer, ‘yes’, without ever having asked a clear question.”

Make it a challenge for yourself to go out today and get people to be enrolled in who you are by your body language, by your movement, by the way you connect through your eyes. Find a way to attract people to you, to have them give you what you want, without ever having to say a word. That is someone who has mastered the art of all of this.

I hope you enjoyed this one and, as always, you know what time it is: It’s time to go out there and do something great!